Prof. Basavaraja Kodagunti is a noted linguist and Director at the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), and previously served as Head of the Department of Kannada at the Central University of Karnataka, Kalaburagi (CUK), where he also coordinated the Center for Endangered Languages and the Department of Linguistics. He holds a doctorate from the University of Mysore on the historical development of case markers in Kannada, and his research spans Kannada and Dravidian historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, language documentation, Indian Grammatical Traditions, and endangered and minor languages such as Koracha and Korava. He has authored and edited around 60 books, including the multi-volume Haydarabada Karnataka series and the Kannada Araypu research-thesis series, and has published over eighty papers in national and international journals. He has supervised numerous doctoral and M.Phil dissertations, served as editor of the UGC-CARE journal Aniketana, and presented his work at international forums, including conferences of the Linguistic Society of India and South Asian Language Analysis. His honors include the Ha.Ma.Na Prashasti for linguistics works and a Bhasha Fellowship from the Bhasha Research Institute, Baroda. He is currently contributing to Kadambas and The Making of Karnataka, a research project jointly conducted by Sri Satya Sai University of Human Excellence and FIHCR.